The Roasters & The Stand
emuni• Date added
18 August 2023
The Roasters is a coffee roastery and café located in Wakayama, Japan, a place rich in natural beauty. The roastery specialises in meticulously selected single origin coffee beans, roasted onsite.
Tokyo-based graphic design studio Emuni created the packaging design for the single origin coffee beans, released in limited quantities.
Client
RAPYARD
Year
2016
Art Director
Masashi Murakami
Designer
Masashi Murakami
Typefaces in Use
Emuni approached The Roasters' art direction with the intention of setting the brand apart from typical coffee brands found in urban areas like Tokyo, often evoking the imagery of Brooklyn or Portland cafés, to align with global trends.
Emuni made a conscious decision to take a distinctive approach, designing a main graphic on the packaging that has no specific meaning. Drawing inspiration from the flavours of each region's coffee beans, the studio translated these taste experiences into a combination of colours and shapes. The design process involved relying solely on their own sense of taste as the source of these unique shapes, consciously avoiding any direct depiction of the various coffee origins.
Through this process, Emuni expressed the depth of flavour through perspective, delightful aromas through vivid colours, and the progression of flavours in a graphic format, with each region represented by a distinct graphic design. The end result is a coffee brand different from the conventional image often associated with coffee-producing regions.
The studio's emphasis on distinctiveness is also reflected in the simple text placement, the uniform arrangement of the letters, and the use of the neutral Akzidenz Grotesk font, devoid of any specific attributes.
Emuni's graphics extended beyond packaging, and find their way onto posters, scarves, and various other media to further reinforce the brand's distinctiveness. Despite its quiet location in Wakayama, The Roasters packaging became a talking point, drawing in coffee enthusiasts from both nearby and distant locations looking to purchase these coffee beans.
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